Why should Mr. Reid be taking up a cry, which was common enough in Victoria twenty to thirty years ago, and upon which the changes have been rung ever since at more or less distant intervals? There is not a single branch of industry in Victoria in reference to which the same question has not been asked, at one time or other, as he now asks in reference to wheat-growing. We have had to listen, from time to time, to such cries as these, which, like history, have ever been repeating themselves. Does mining pay? Does squatting pay? Does sheep-farming pay? Does the breeding and rearing of cattle pay? And now we have again "Does wheat-growing pay?" with a doleful shake of the head, intended to convey the impression that it does not. The last of these cries, Mr. Reid has "fathered" now, and he should know something about the matter, as he refers to his own experience in connection with it. But let us call his attention to other matters, in connection with which he has had a larger and more successful experience. Suppose him to have been asked, a couple of years ago, or a little more, that is to say before the late rise in the price of wool, does sheepfarming pay, what would he have said? Pay, indeed! look at the reclamations that are constantly being sent in to the wool-growers for advances on shipments of wool, beyond what they fetched in the London market, and let them tell their own tale! That would probably have been his answer, and a very proper one too. Or suppose him to be asked now, does the breeding and rearing of cattle pay, what would be his reply? If he spoke truly and disinterestedly, as he undoubtedly would, it would be something like this: See the prices at which ordinary cattle are passing from hand to hand in the country districts; look at the prices fat cattle are fetching in the Ballarat, Sandhurst, Geelong, and Melbourne markets. Next, take into consideration the fact that the late Hon. Niel Black abandoned his sale of shorthorns last year, after it had been advertised, that the Messrs. Robertson decided on not holding any sale that year, and that other breeders of high-class cattle, who continued their yearly sales, had to submit to ruinous prices. From these statements, draw your own conclusions. Every branch of industry, pastoral as well as agricultural, has its times of depression.

When Mr. Reid states, as he does, that his object in writing the article I am now commenting on was not to inquire into “farming in general, but wheat-growing in particular," he gives no reason for this. Should I be far wrong, however, in supposing that his declared opinion as to the 20 per cent. duties being the chief

hindrance to successful wheat-growing in Victoria had taken such a hold on his mind that he could think of nothing else not subsidiary to it, or that did not support him in that view of the case? Probably not; but supposing wheat-growing not to pay alone, might it not pay with something else—with something that no farmer or selector ever thinks of altogether neglecting? As a matter of fact, we know that it does pay in this way, and it therefore appears to me that it would have been better for Mr. Reid to have extended his inquiries to "farming in general," and not to have confined it to "wheat-growing in particular." In Hayter's Year Book for 1879-80, we have the following estimate of the value of the crops raised by the farmers and selectors during the year ended 31st March, 1880:

VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE, 1879-80.

That shows that they have something else to look to besides wheat-growing, but they are not credited in this inquiry with all to which they are fairly entitled. Where are their sheep, cattle, horses, pigs and poultry? Where their milk, butter and cheese, not to mention anything else now? Mr. Hayter's estimate of the value of the milk, butter, and cheese produced in the colony in 1879-80 is £2,366,000, a large portion of which must, of course, be claimed as the produce of the farmers and selectors, so that they do not figure so very insignificantly as producers after all. Give them another million and a quarter, or a little more than half the value of the milk produced in the colony, and the total in the table given above might be safely raised from £5,875,313 to £7,000,000, without taking their sheep, cattle, horses, and other things into account. But I should do them an injustice were I,

in this connection, to pass over the improvements they have made, and are yearly making, at their homesteads and on their holdings, by fencing, clearing, and buildings, whereby the value of their property is enhanced. I say it not boastingly, yet with a feeling of perfect confidence, that no interest in the colony can show a better front at the present time than the farming interest. Why then should "wheat-growing in particular," and not "farming in general" be inquired into? Is it because it is thought that a better case can be made out against the farmers and selectors by taking the former course than by adopting the latter? It seems like it.

But what I object to most of all in Mr. Reid's article, is the use to which he puts what he says about the effect of the 20 per cent. duties on the farmers and selectors, and about wheatgrowing not paying, for that and other reasons to be further noticed hereafter. I shall not do Mr. Reid the injustice of supposing that he had not the best of motives as an honest free-trader, and as a gentleman well acquainted with the state of the country, for writing as he has done, and for flying, as he appears to imagine, to the rescue of the farmers and selectors from impending ruin. Yet the best of motives are no justification for what a man writes, if it has an injurious effect on the minds of those to whom it is addressed, or if calculated to produce an effect in the minds of people generally adverse to the public good. Mr. Reid is not, therefore, justified, in my opinion, in addressing the farmers and selectors as he does, in the article before us, in such language as this-divested, it is true, of its surplusage, but still his own:-" Gentlemen farmers and selectors, you are much to be pitied, and I pity you from my very heart. You are a deluded body of men, and I wish to help you to get rid of your delusions. You have got land-some more, some less-some by laying up your hard earnings to purchase it, others on credit from the Government-and you think you can make a living out of it, without capital to work it, or stock to put upon it. You have lately, moreover, taken it into your heads that wheat-growing is of all others the most profitable kind of agricultural industry, and you have been toiling late and early, day and night at it, as you all know, with very indifferent success. Well, I have looked closely into this matter, made some calculations myself, and got calculations from others, as to what it should cost you, and must cost you to produce an acre of wheat, and the conclusions I have arrived at with respect to it are decidedly unfavourable. I know how many bushels of wheat an acre will produce, what it will cost

you to produce it, and what you are likely to get for it, as well as you do yourselves, and there is one thing I know better than you do, from having more closely studied it, which is, that you can never make wheat-growing pay with a 20 per cent. duty on every bushel you grow, and hardly without it. The longer you stick to the land, the poorer it will become, the less it will produce, and the more you will be impoverished. Abandon your land, therefore, if you cannot sell it, which is doubtful; sell or burn your ploughs and harrows; clear off what little stock you have, and make tracks for some other country. The land may then recover its fertility, and be turned into sheep walks, or cattle runs, from which it ought never to have been diverted. Adieu."

Objection may be taken to the substance of this imaginary speech, as not founded on anything Mr. Reid really says in his article. But when he says, as he actually does, "If the farmer can go to fresh fields, with some money in his purse, and his debts paid, we may hug ourselves in the belief, that, in process of time, the exhausted land may regain some portion of its lost fertility." He must mean what I have put into the "vernacular," and he can mean nothing else. Such a mode of addressing a large body of people-presumably one-sixth, or one-fourth of the whole producing population of the colony-and of advising them as to their future course, is without parallel in any country, and Mr. Reid has put himself, as a gentleman of position, in a condition of perfect isolation by it. Most certainly, no parallel can be found in the United States of America, or in South Australia-the two countries most closely resembling Victoria with regard to wheat-growing and wheat-exporting, and with whom we are called upon to compete in the great markets of the world for the sale of our produce.

The Americans are as great protectionists as the Victorians, and, indeed, much more so, if we are to judge by their imposing a duty of 40 per cent. on articles, upon which we only charge 20 per cent. Yet no one there-not the most pronounced free-trader, of whom there are thousands and hundreds of thousands, we might almost say, millions even, springing up-ever thinks of discouraging the growth of wheat, and its export to England or any other country, on account of the cost of its production, or of its being subjected to a heavy protective duty in some roundabout way. On the contrary, while it costs them-as we see from the report of Messrs. Read and Pell to the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, President of the British Royal Commission on Agriculture-just as much to produce a

bushel of wheat as it costs us, and whilst they get in return for their wheat and flour, iron and other metals, wool and woollen goods, cotton and other textiles, upon which they pay far heavier duties, when received in that country, than 20 per cent., they adopt a very different course to the one suggested by Mr. Reid, and which is more truly patriotic. Without stopping very minutely to inquire what it costs the wheat-growers to produce a bushel of grain, or what they will get in exchange for it, whether in coin or dutiable articles, their constant cry is-" Go on producing; you can produce as cheaply as anybody else; where you see a country in want of wheat, send yours; a store in want of a sack of flour, thrust one into it; a mouth in want of a loaf of bread, stop it with one. We produced 500,000,000 bushels of wheat last year-ten bushels per head on our present population of 51,000,000, or very nearly so— and there is no knowing what we shall produce next. But whether 500,000,000 or 600,000,000 bushels, a market must be found for it. Exchange is the soul of commerce. It is not enough that we feed ourselves. We must help to feed the world. In that, the great secret of a country's prosperity lies."

South Australia, also, furnishes us with an example of the same far-seeing policy. Their heavy duties, comparatively speaking, are levied on foreign imports, not for protective, but for revenue purposes, and it may, therefore, be claimed as a freetrade colony. Still, if Mr. Reid's theory be the correct one-instead of being, as I maintain, a pure fallacy-their duties should operate in just the same way as our 20 per cent. duties do in proportion to their amount, that is, as a discouragement to wheat-growing and wheat-exporting, and the South Australians cannot, as all know, produce more cheaply than the Victorian farmers and selectors do. But the South Australians never dream of anything so contrary to common prudence and common sense as to urge the wheat-growing portion of the community to shorten the supply, because it costs so much to produce it, or to cease their exportations, because they have to pay a duty on their imports. They are a sedate and thoroughly industrious people, not so much given to "blow" as the Americans, but they still go on steadily producing their acreage of wheat, their aggregate in bushels, and their exports of it, increasing every year, and being unusually large in proportion to the population of the colony. In 1879, they had 1,500,000 acres under wheat, which yielded 14,000,000 bushels, and they exported 70,000 tons of flour, and 442,000 quarters of wheat, of the value of £1,500,000 sterling.